


Paper, Cotton, Leather

by thought



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Warren Kepler's five-year-plan, horses and other livestock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 10:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12769047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: The great thing about being on a team where everybody has been shaped primarily by a combination of egotism and some flavour of childhood trauma is the guessing game you get to play when something about a situation is clearly affecting your teammate(s), and you have to figure out how to handle it without anybody acknowledging that there's anything going on. Everybody loses if any of you have to talk about the feelings that you definitely do not have.





	Paper, Cotton, Leather

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I was going to post this for Jacobi's birthday but then I hated it and I thought staring at it for a week would help.  
> The most important thing to know about this story is that all the alarming objects referenced herein are 100% real.

Jacobi likes to think of himself as a pragmatist, and thus he's entirely comfortable admitting that his issues all stem from a pretty standard narrative-- he disappointed his mother by failing at being a girl, disappointed his father by failing at being a man, disappointed his colleagues by not predicting the accident, disappointed himself by dropping out of his PhD program to test-drive high-functioning alcoholism and sell his soul and body to an ethically dubious tech giant for the chance at gaining yet another authority figure's approval. He's also the only one out of the three of them who has ever gone to therapy. It still counts even if he bullshitted his way through the entire ridiculous process. All this to say, he really wishes Kepler and Maxwell could take ten minutes out of their frantic rush towards a better brighter future to develop some goddamn self-awareness, because playing referee while Maxwell pushes and pushes at the limits of Kepler's greatly reduced patience is not how he wanted to spend his birthday.

"I'm going to buy you a fringed plaid vest," Maxwell says, appearing out of the crowds of people lining the exhibit hall. "Happy birthday, asshole, welcome to corporate agricultural hell." Jacobi waves her off, distracted.

"That horse's ass is taller than you," he tells Kepler gravely. "It's taller than this wall. Making contact with Tractorface is just a front, isn't it, we're actually here to investigate use of the super-soldier serum on livestock."

"They're draft horses, settle down," Maxwell says. "And his name is scrooge."

"And I said Scrooge is unimaginative and colonialist. I'm pretty sure I'm the only non-white person within like, a 60-mile radius, you've gotta work with me here."

"I don't... think Colonialism means what you think it means."

"Can we _please_ move on?" Kepler says. "Or do we need to expand even further on Mr. Jacobi's animal husbandry education."

"I don't knowhow you didn't know what a draft horse is," Maxwell says. "It's not like it's secret equestrian knowledge. You've seen a working horse before, haven't you, Sir?" Which is some bullshit, Maxwell grew up in a town where everybody lived beneath the poverty line and also a permanent layer of coal dust, and apparently Kepler grew up in the thriving metropolis of Chicago, and Jacobi's pretty certain there aren't any farms lurking in amongst the urban sprawl.

Kepler starts walking so Jacobi has to turn his back on the giant fucking monsters lined up in pens that look frankly a bit too structurally unsound for his comfort to follow him.

"Um," Jacobi says, "how about the fact that the most nature I saw for the first eighteen years of my life was the bushes behind the high school where everybody went to smoke weed and cry over their existential teenaged angst?"

"And here I thought Wisconsin was all beautiful Norse gods skiing through snowy wonderlands in search of the one true cheese."

"You watched that fucking movie, didn't you?"

"Not intentionally. Someone had it on in the lab last week to get all of us into the Christmas spirit, which I'm pretty sure is against company discrimination policies."

"But it's about gay people so it's ok," he says, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, I have never been skiing or to Ikia."

"That's Swedish," she corrects him. "And you do love cheese."

"Which has nothing to d-- motherfucker!"

Kepler sighs loudly. Maxwell collapses into laughter, clutching Jacobi's arm for balance. The chickens stare at him, darkly. He glares back. "You just. Stay over there, and we won't have a problem," he tells them.

"They don't even look the same," Maxwell says.

"Google a fucking picture of a duck and say that to my face."

"I'm not the one who has problems with animal identification."

"Ok, you know what, I bet the colonel _didn't_ know about draft horses either," he says, and immediately regrets it.

Kepler beams over at them. "Well, actually, did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally bought an entire stable?"

"if I say yes, would that stop you?" Maxwell asks, and Jacobi shakes his head sadly. She's still so innocent.

Kepler's story caries them past the three rows of cows, all tied down with rope and facing away from the side of their pens, past the goats and the sheep and the kids blow drying their sheep (what the actual fuck?), and even past the over-priced coffee and pizza and fries.

The marketplace takes up two halls of the expo centre, and is the only place that doesn't reek like cow shit and horse sweat. He notices Maxwell sucking in air like she's just come up from almost drowning. Serves her right. Their target is the owner of a couple heavy equipment factories who has made some poor investment choices of late. Or rather, poor choices in investment partners. They're only supposed to make contact, lay the groundwork for getting into his confidences far enough to know if he's aware what kinds of people he's throwing his money in with. Kepler would rather they just kill him and get it over with, which he said no less than five times in the mission briefing, but Jacobi's pretty sure that's just because he's probably going to wind up being the one who Tractorface latches on to.

"The real tragedy of being a white Southern man," Jacobi had said, dryly, in the truck on their way to the Farm Expo.

Maxwell had glanced up, surprised. "He's not Southern, he was born in Chicago. I just assume the accent is an affectation."

"Suddenly the story about your band is 100% more believable," Jacobi had said, before he could stop himself.

"My personnel file is classified for a reason, dr. Maxwell," Kepler had said, but he mostly sounded resigned.

"I'm naturally curious," she'd said, like she was quoting someone.

Kepler had taken a hand off the wheel to painstakingly type a text into his phone. Jacobi, glaring at the back of his head, had said "You realize you just got some poor cyber security expert into a tragic accident?"

Maxwell had smirked. "It's a hard copy file."

Jacobi had reached out to high five her without looking-- if Kepler had gotten them killed by being a distracted driver Jacobi intended to haunt the fucking shit out of him even if he was also a ghost. "I'm impressed, Maxwell."

"Me too," Kepler had said. "Don't do it again."

"Uh huh," Maxwell had said, not even trying for sincerity. Jacobi's still not sure if she realized he was completely serious about the Goddard security employee who wasn't going to make it through the week.

The marketplace is crowded with people to the point of a definite fire hazard. "Ugh, sightlines in here would be impossible," Maxwell mutters under her breath, and Jacobi's struck with a flash of intense fondness for her.

"That's why you have me," he says, nudging her with his shoulder. "Boom."

There are flimsy rope barriers set up to guide everyone through the rows of venders in an orderly, inescapable parade.

"I assume if you can prove you've spent at least $3000 you can buy your freedom," Kepler says.

Jacobi is staring at a combined holiday trailer/horse trailer combination at the low low price of $100000. "I think you forgot a zero," he says.

Slowly, they plod forward. Maxwell tries to use his shoulder to balance as she goes up on her tiptoes to peer over the sea of people. "I can't even see the heavy equipment area," she says. "I definitely should have taken my chances with that coffee."

Kepler ducks to the side and comes back with some sort of long-handled implement with a wide flap of stiff leather on the end. He flicks Jacobi with it, because he's a fucking asshole. Jacobi, the consummate professional that he is, makes sure to look away before Kepler can see his blush.

Maxwell grabs it from Kepler and squints at the little tag hanging off the end. "100% real leather fly swatter," she says, bemusedly.

"This is really not where I imagined my life would be at 32," Jacobi says, flatly.

Maxwell hangs the fly swatter back up and Jacobi and Kepler play an aggressive game of 'nobody here now has unfortunate sexual associations with disgusting household items'.

Jacobi wins. He's actually better at keeping his face expressionless. One of his many natural talents and definitely in no way perfected by spending ages 16-22 trying to convince his father that the only emotions he experienced were anger and patriotism. Some people find it unsettling, to which he says: 'do you really want to know how much I'm silently judging you all the time?'. Kepler doesn't know what to do with his body language when he's not using it as performance or manipulation. Jacobi's seen it happen twice. Three times, now. Incredible.

"It's not even that weird, comparatively," Maxwell says, rolling her eyes. They take advantage of a slight break in the crowd to push forward as a group, managing to bypass a stand of neon cowboy boots and a kiosk selling some kind of mini humidifiers puffing sickeningly perfumed air at them like tiny dragons.

They suffer through a wrack of baby-sized plaid shirts and tiny soft-soled cowboy boots and a bunch of horse-patterned fleece blankets, followed up by a variety of fake leather wallets disguised under layers of fringe and sparkles and brass emblems. There's a super awkward moment where they all pretend not to notice the kitschy sign that says 'danger: men drinking'. Nobody here has ever heard of a feeling, thank you, please try again never.

"You know," he says, "I really think having all three of us here to approach Tractorface is a tactical misstep. He's more likely to bond with a single person alone-- and by person I mean you, Sir."

"I did catch on to that, thank you."

"He's right," Maxwell says, so Jacobi almost feels bad when he continues--

"And if we don't think your charm will work, Maxwell's the second most likely to get his attention. He's an old conservative white guy, he'll be all over a woman half his age even if she couldn't flirt her way out of a cardboard box."

Maxwell coughs. "Please, Daniel, talk to us about your refined flirting technique. I'm sure unquestioning loyalty and bleeding attractively are a hit with all the boys."

Jacobi arches an eyebrow in Kepler's direction. Kepler ignores him, which is probably for the best.

A microphone screeches close to their right. Jacobi startles slightly along with every single other person in the area excepting Kepler and Maxwell. Fucking seriously? Is he the only one not reduced to amateur hour by a few horses? If he can keep his cover fifteen minutes after a close encounter of the domestic fowl variety the two of them have no excuse.

It turns out the microphone belongs to a tall man with stringy hair and giant glasses who is here today to preach the gospel of the "best leather polish you can get outside of Italy". He's also alarmingly determined to shine everyone's shoes. Maxwell, the heretic, is wearing canvas running shoes, and Kepler gives the man a look that makes him physically flinch backwards. Jacobi has no such defense.

"My feet feel violated," he says, afterward, cringing.

"But your shoes are so shiny," Maxwell says, innocently. "They look just like new. It's a miracle."

"Fuck you."

"I just don't know how you're going to decide between the clear polish or the black polish, they both have so many unique benefits-- sorry, Sir, I'm shutting up."

Kepler's eyebrows fall back the miniscule amount they'd crept up, and the single wrinkle in his brow smooths out. He's not mad enough to waste his breath on words. Nobody's in danger until he starts leaning forward. The lean had been underlined three times in red in the 'Unofficial Guide to Warren Kepler's Body Language, Facial Expressions, and Intensity of Accent', may it rest in peace.

Ten minutes later, Jacobi says "I think the thing our team has really been missing is an infusion of organic peppermint, rosehips, and Astragalus to give us a gentle, uplifting Yee-Haw in the mornings."

"I'm really glad they included the Yee-haw," Maxwell says. "I was starting to get worried the locally imported organic tea stand wasn't actually relevant to this event, but now my worries have been put to rest."

The woman sitting behind the tea table smiles widely at Jacobi. "If you buy three bags of tea you get a special discount," she tells him. "You look like an acai berry rooibos man to me, am I right?"

"Oh, uh... no," he says, backing away. "No, thank you."

She tips her head to the side. "Are you sure? I tell you what, I'll give you the extra cowboy discount, a little gift for an interested customer."

"I don't drink," he says, hurriedly. "Anything. I'm actually a robot, it's a very sensitive topic goodbye."

Kepler is pretending not to know him, staring intently at a row of shiny brass belt buckles in the shape of horse shoes and guns and trucks. Maxwell is--

"Did you finally snap and kill Maxwell while I wasn't looking or did the chickens kidnap her?" Jacobi asks.

Without looking away from the display Kepler says, "Have you ever considered the potential of a belt buckle to be weaponized?"

"Yes," says Jacobi. Thanks, dad.

Maxwell reappears before he can start a poultry hunt on her behalf. She ignores Jacobi, stepping up beside Kepler so he's forced to look at her. "I want you to take a minute, and seriously contemplate the increased efficacy of the whiskey speech if you were to have the whiskey stored in a flask with a horse's back end engraved on the side."

"You're saying words," Jacobi cuts in, "but all I'm hearing is birthday present." And then, hurriedly, "For Kepler. Not for me."

"You don't know when my birthday is," Kepler says -- and before Maxwell can object -- "I lied on my paperwork."

Jacobi frowns. "And here I thought you wanted to die for something you believe in."

"Nah," Maxwell says. "He wants us to die for something he believes in."

Kepler actually chuckles at that.

"When you work for people like our esteemed superiors you take your small pleasures where you can, Mr. Jacobi. You know that."

Jacobi thinks about it for a minute. "What did you figure out about Goddard that was worth that risk?"

Kepler shoves his hands in the pockets of his soft brown leather jacket. "Consider that your homework."

"Do we get a gold star if we answer correctly?" Jacobi asks dryly.

Instead of answering Kepler lunges through a gap in the crowd and between two tables, effectively jumping a row ahead in the endless march of capitalism. They've been following the pattern long enough that it really fucking bothers Jacobi to break it, but the way Maxwell throws herself after Kepler like he's found water in the desert means he can't actually say anything.

"You've just mortally offended that man with the exercise equipment," he tells them both as soon as they emerge beside a tack display. "You'll never have the opportunity to experience the magic of standing on a giant vibrator for an hour a day and then being confused when you don't lose weight."

"New game," Kepler says, after an interminable fifteen minutes where they move about six feet forward in total. "For every ridiculous vender you have to identify an item they're selling that could be used in at least two ways to subdue or eliminate a target."

"Sleeves," Maxwell says, immediately, holding up a long-sleeved flannel shirt that, for reasons beyond Jacobi's comprehension, is the length of a dress. "Strangulation, restraint. Also, you could probably smother someone. Not with the sleeves."

"Boring," Jacobi says. "Are those actual horse shoes because I'm picturing concussions as beautiful as those fake diamonds they're bedazzled with."

"Yes, but that's only one."

Kepler is smiling blandly, which could mean anything. "Close doesn't count in horse shoes in this case," he says, lightly.

Jacobi presses his lips together. "If you're a professional it doesn't count in hand grenades either."

They plod forward around a corner. "Really?" Jacobi says. "Is Hallmark getting into the farming business now, too?"

"Look, I can get you a birthday card with a chicken on it," Maxwell says. "Though I don't know if your heart could take it."

"I'm not even listening to you, you are a child and I already had my third-of-a-life crisis when I turned 30. I'm embracing 32."

"You're the same age Colonel Kepler was when he got promoted to his position," she says. "Is this the year you stage a coup and take his place, bringing us into a younger, hipper age of corporate violence?"

“Give it a couple years,” he says absently. His brain is doing math against his will. He doesn't want to know this. "By which I mean, no. I'm really not interested in his job."

"Don't worry," Kepler says. "I never thought you were."

Usually, Kepler's self-assuredness when it comes to how well he understands Jacobi and Maxwell is comforting. Right now, it makes Jacobi want to slam the hot pink tool kit on the table beside him into his face. "Alana," he says, watching Kepler. "When did you start getting major pushback and criticism of your views on AI?"

"I don't remember. Always, I guess? Especially after people convinced me to write for anything without a paywall." She sounds confused, so either she already knows or she legitimately has never considered their timelines. Either way it pisses him off. She's supposed to be his other half. She's supposed to be the smartest one. Neither explanation is acceptable given these expectations.

Kepler's examining a bright copper multitool, sliding the blade out and twisting it to catch the florescent light like it's a rare and impressive weapon. It's not as unsettling as he probably thinks it is. "You were 32 in 2009," Jacobi says.

Kepler inclines his head. "And you're 32 today, Mr. Jacobi. Look where you are."

"Hanging out with a bunch of middle class white Republicans, their barnyards, and both of you guys' poorly repressed issues about that," he says, flatly, because today is not the sort of day where he can get away with yelling at Kepler, but he's also starting to feel like he's a long way away from this place, from his body, and it's making him reckless. "Living the dream."

"You're welcome to leave," Kepler lies. Maxwell laughs angrily, which is a thing he didn't know was physically possible.

They take a few more shuffling steps forward. Jacobi holds up a couple different bottles of leather cleaner and oil, and a lighter with a tiny plastic cowboy hat glued to the side. "Boom," he says.

Kepler shakes his head like he's done wasting his time on Jacobi's antics. Maxwell says, "I think I see a tractor."

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at/with me on tumblr, I'm Thought-42.


End file.
